Time-varying intensity map generation for reticles

• Main Authors: HESS CARL, SHI RUI-FANG, VAVUL THOMAS
• Format: Patent
• Language: Chinese; English
• Published: 19.07.2019
• Subjects: APPARATUS SPECIALLY ADAPTED THEREFOR; CINEMATOGRAPHY; ELECTROGRAPHY; HOLOGRAPHY; INVESTIGATING OR ANALYSING MATERIALS BY DETERMINING THEIRCHEMICAL OR PHYSICAL PROPERTIES; MATERIALS THEREFOR; MEASURING; ORIGINALS THEREFOR; PHOTOGRAPHY; PHOTOMECHANICAL PRODUCTION OF TEXTURED OR PATTERNED SURFACES,e.g. FOR PRINTING, FOR PROCESSING OF SEMICONDUCTORDEVICES; PHYSICS; TESTING

The invention relates to time-varying intensity map generation for reticles. Disclosed are methods and apparatus for inspecting a photolithographic reticle. A plurality of patch areas of a reticle aredefined. Prior to using a reticle in any photolithography process, an optical reticle inspection tool is used during a first inspection to obtain, for each of a plurality of sets of one or more patchareas, a reference average of multiple reference intensity values corresponding to light measured from a plurality of sub-areas of each patch area of the reticle. After using the reticle in a plurality of photolithography processes, the optical reticle inspection tool is used during a second inspection to obtain, for each of the sets of one or more patch areas, an average of multiple test intensity values corresponding to light measured from the plurality of sub-areas of each patch area of the reticle. A same setup recipe for the optical reticle inspection tool is used for both the first andsecond inspections. A diffe